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Sep 30, 2013

It makes sense that we had a dresser and balcony furniture before having a bed, right? Priorities!
Nah, the bed took a while, because it's a few centuries old and had to be restaurated carefully. It's from the 30s/40s and once belonged to my parents old landlord & landlady in Berlin. It's a so-called matrimonial bed and it had two mattresses divided by a wooden board in the middle. Since we live in the modern times I wanted to find a way for it to hold only one mattress.
But let's start at the beginning:

The first thing we did was to rid it from spiders webs and dust, because the beds resided in my parents attic for quite a while.

Then we used wood stain on it to mend dents and darken the wood a bit. Age has lighened up the wood and it took a couple of coats to bring out that nice dark pattern.

Then we added wood blocks to the already excisting blocks on the sides that hold up the spring bed frame. This ensured that the mattress would lie on top of the bed without bending in the middle, because the frame was moved up.

The spring bed frame still had its label on it. Unfortunately it didn't say exactly when it was build, but I'm sure the 25 years guarantee are long passed.

As a final touch I oiled the bed to seal the wood stain and for protection. I let the oil sit for a day before putting the mattress in and putting sheets and pillows and blankets on it. So far it hasn't stained anything, so it was enough time to soak into the wood. The oil also darkened the wood a little more and made it shine all prettily.

I'm pretty satisfied with the final result. It is a huge bed and a huge improvement to our sleeping couch we had for the past 3 years (an interim solution that lasted...). I also like the contrast between our modern dresser and the vintage beauty of that bed. Now I only need to get my mother's vanity from the attic and the bedroom will be finished. Feels good to hear that. Moving is no fun, but new is good and goodness takes time.

Sep 23, 2013

Last Thursday I went to another workshop. This time organized by Dawanda, an online shop for homemade goodies. The workshop was hosted by the lovely Fräulein Tong Tong who sells a bunch of awesomeness, so check her out.

I prepared for the workshop by printing out a few possible stencils for my project. The Name Krowns is a combination of my future husbands and my last name. And if the US embassy is willing it'll be our name from next year on.
With the help of Fräulein Tong Tong I chose the comic like writing, because it was the thickest font and easiest to thread around.
My good friend Romie joined me for this workshop.
Representing Dawanda was the lovely Lu from luloveshandmade. It was a pleasure to meet her in person!
Busy fellow workshoppers & a peek at the Dawanda Snuggery.
Hammering the nails was much more exhausting than I would have thought. Especially because you really have to put a nail on each corner of the letters and multiple ones on round letters to make the fully visible.
Hours later: tadaaa. I love it! It'll be the centerpiece of our wedding table.

This is what my mate Romie accomplished! The ampersand was drawn from memory and by hand.. jealous!
Of course I forgot to take step by step pictures at the workshop, so it was a good thing I didn't finish both of my projects at the workshop. I was able to paint two pieces of wooden shelf at the workshop. I mixed the colour myself, creating the first wedding theme colour, I believe.
The heart was drawn with a folded piece of paper (because I'm terrible at drawing).
I tried to hammer the nails into the wood as evenly as possible and about a third of the lenght in. You can check if the lenghts are even by looking at the boeard from the side.
Then I removed the paper. If it sticks in between the nail and the wood you can try to pick it out with tweezers or make it wet and rub it off.

Then it's time to thread, thread, thread. You can thread it any way you like. I tried not to connect two of the neighboured nails, but that's just me.

Finished! I really like both pieces of art & enjoyed the workshop immensely. Definitely something I would like to do again very soon! It's always great to try out a new craft.

Sep 16, 2013

You've probably already seen a glimpse of our balcony furniture in my post about the upcycling workshop and I can finally show you the making here. One of the most important things for me to look for in an apartment was a balcony. I have never had one outside my parents house where we also had a garden and I missed being able to leave the house witout leaving the house and having space for plants and relaxation.
So after finishing the dresser I was on the lookout for balcony furniture on ebay to buy for cheaps.

The set cost me 15€, which is more than half of what it would have cost new. I got wooden furniture, because the plan was to paint it anyways. I was undecided about the colours at first, but we had gone to a furniture store just a few days earlier and there was a set of decorations in white and lavender that really looked quite lovely. With the black metal table and chair legs it doesn't look too tacky.
I started by taking off all the wooden strips and painting them white.
After letting the paint dry for about two days I mixed up a nice colour of lavender by adding blue and red paint to the same white lacquer I used for the base coat.
Covered half of the wooden strips with the lavender paint and the other half with another coat of white paint. I let it dry for another couple of days before screwing everything back together, because the lacquer is still really sensitive to dent and scratch even if the paint is dry to the touch.
Looking very good I'd say. Too bad summer ended so quickly, we didn't have too many occasions to use it, but we are hoping for many more summers in this apartment.

Sep 9, 2013

Here we go. Our first big project for the apartment was our dresser. I wanted a big dresser for both of our clothes and one that would fill an entire wall in our bedroom. Luckily there was a perfect fit at my parents house which was not being used for anything important, so we claimed it.
Of course it needed some serious upcycling. I'm really sorry about the crap quality of the pictures in this post. If you're in the middle of a big project like this the thought of taking presentable photos for the blog didn't cross my mind too often.

I guess it's a better quality than ikea, but the colour of light brown wood is just too... I don't know. Cabin in the woods? I really don't like it, that's for sure. So my plan was to paint it white and "shabby chic" it by sanding the edges. Then the future husband suggested that that's a crap hipster idea and desided of painting the doors different pastell colours and the rest white. Good enough!

*Tattoo by my good friend Sonja who just opened her very own tattoo studio in Berlin this year: Zum Frischen Lutz

The future husband did this all by himself! I only helped by taking the dresser apart and putting it together again. All the paint job credit goes to him.
I am very much enjoying this new/old big ass dresser! Though I do have a few too many clothes, I need to sort a bunch out very soon. Not just to please the man but also to get some order into the dresser and to get rid of excess baggage, not just in a physical sense.